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Tommy (Arnold), a gifted teenage composer, dreams of being accepted into the famous Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Unfortunately, a good band is hard to find in the middle of the Australian Outback—until an incident involving flying watermelons leads him to a group of talented prison inmates.

Jeff Vice of the Deseret News praises the "gorgeous Australian settings" and the cast of "mostly fresh-faced actors," sums it up as an "entertaining feel-good tale", before awarding the film 2½ stars out of four.[4]

The movie though said to be fictional has parallels to the true life story of the jail house band Captive Edition and country singer Ricky Joan which were formed in Australias notorious Long Bay jail by the musician Vincent Ruello who as a volunteer auditioned the inmates in 1993 and produced and recorded inside the jail auditorium the Hope album which was signed up to Warner Chappel music publishing house by the CEO John Bromel after hearing the cd. The Hope album spawned music rehab programmes across all Australian jails when released in 1994 to extensive media coverage.